Where Islam spreads, freedom dies

The Greek government has hinted that it will seek to ban Golden Dawn after the far-right party was linked to the murder of a leading leftwing musician in Athens.

As violence erupted on the streets and demonstrators protested after the fatal stabbing of Pavlos Fyssas, a prominent anti-fascist, the public order minister, Nikos Dendias, cancelled a trip abroad saying the government would table emergency legislation that would seek to outlaw the group.

Amid renewed political tensions between the extreme left and right, the new law would re-evaluate what constituted a criminal gang, he said.

"Neither the state will tolerate, nor society accept, acts and practices that undermine the legal system," the minister told reporters, adding that the attack showed "in the clearest way the [party's] intentions".

Voted into the Greek parliament for the first time last June, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn has been widely accused of employing violence to further its ratings in the polls.

The socialist Pasok party, the junior member of Antonis Samaras's two-party coalition, has campaigned openly for it to be banned, saying it should be considered a criminal gang.

The 34-year-old rapper died within minutes of being stabbed in the chest when he and a group of seven friends were set upon by around 30 black-clad supporters of Golden Dawn in the working-class district of Keratsini.

Eyewitnesses said the singer was stabbed several times by a man who suddenly appeared in a car after being phoned by members of the mob. The attack bore all the hallmarks of a premeditated assault, they said.

The alleged perpetrator, a 45-year-old man who was arrested when police rushed to the scene, later confessed to being a member of Golden Dawn. His wife, who was also detained, admitted having attempted to hide incriminating evidence, including party credentials linking her husband to the extremist organisation, when he called her, panic stricken, after the murder. Greek media cited police as saying the man was not only a sympathiser of Golden Dawn but visited its offices in Keratsini "five or six times" a week.

With parties across Greece's entire political spectrum condemning the killing, the far-right group vehemently denied it had any connection with the crime or the alleged culprit. In a rare intervention, the president, Karolos Papoulias, warned: "It is our duty not to allow any space whatsoever to fascism – not even an inch."

Fyssas, who performed under the stage name Killah P, would be the first Greek to have died at the hands of Golden Dawn, which until recently reserved its venom exclusively for migrants. Within hours of his death sending shockwaves through Greek society, the killing was being described as an "assassination."

Greece's third largest party and fastest growing political force, Golden Dawn currently controls 18 seats in the 300-member parliament. It appears to have been emboldened by its soaring popularity on the back of economic desperation.

In an atmosphere brittle with anger, uncertainty and fear, politically motivated violence has escalated, with the ultra-nationalists being blamed for attacks on communist activists last week and on a rightwing mayor in the south over the weekend.

Speculation is rife that the leadership of Golden Dawn may have lost control over a party whose grassroots supporters view themselves as soldiers in an armed struggle aimed at overthrowing a political establishment they blame for the country's woes.

"It is up to the government now to deal with Golden Dawn once and for all," said Giorgos Kyrtsos, a prominent political commentator. "We know very little about the inner workings of Golden Dawn, and whether its leadership has lost control [over its members]. But what we do know is that, for the first time, the government has them in a corner."

Fyssas’s murder put Greece in the international spotlight again and Austrian MEP Hannes Swoboda, who heads the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, suggested that the country might even have to forgo taking over the rotating EU presidency in January. “It is crucial that the Greek government and Parliament draw clear conclusions and come up with solid proposals on how to stop these violent extremist attacks, including the possibility of banning the party altogether,” he said.

“If the Greek government and Prime Minister Samaras fail to put a stop to the hate-filled behavior of Golden Dawn and other fascist groups, it will be an unacceptable presidency and not likely to bring any progress, either for Europe or for Greece,” added Swoboda.

In the video below you see police battling leftists who were trying to attack Golden Dawn's HQ. So they were trying to use political violence to complain about the use of political violence. These leftists attack their political opponents routinely then whine when they get a taste of their own medicine. Oh, and isn't it interesting that the dead "antifascist" rapper used the stage name "Killah P"? I'm sure he thought he was a real badboy.

The Guardian joins in the demands for the suppression of the democracy at the EU level.

Where will this end? How far will a rising Golden Dawn with ties with the police and military go before Greece becomes a totalitarian military state? There is no easy answer to this – I don't think this downward spiral can be stopped without an external intervention. The current state of the Greek political scene is such that it requires coalitions. Since leftist Syriza and communist KKE refuse to form a government with either of the two ruling parties whose power has been significantly reduced, the only solution for the two mainstream parties is to look to the extreme right. As the two governing parties continue implementing the troika-prescribed austerity policies, they will keep getting increasingly unpopular. Eventually, they will have no option than to form a coalition that involves Golden Dawn, which has scored highly in opinion polls, rising from 6.9% to 11.5% after it entered parliament.

...The inability of both the Greek and Cypriot states to curtail the racially motivated violent actions of these groups, as well as the inability of the mainstream political parties to stand up to them, is a call to action for our European partners, who can no longer afford to sit back in their economically recovering countries as if nothing is happening elsewhere. What is naively considered a Greek problem is much more than that – it is no accident that Marie Le Pen's Front National and Nigel Farage's Ukip have increased in popularity recently. The far right is on the rise and collective action at a European level is needed. When parties like the Greek Laos or the French FN become part of the mainstream right, what is considered extreme becomes even more so. The result is what you see happening in Greece – violence, vigilantism and murder.

It's notable that many of the images I can find of "Killah P" feature him wearing a mask. That suggests he was involved in criminal activity, probably beating up people whose political views he disagreed with. It looks like this is basically a reprise of the Clement Meric situation in France, where a leftist thug goes round attacking patriots till he eventually gets into one fight too many.

But here is badboy "Killah P" in all his glory.

Personally, I always think it's a pitiful spectacle when Europeans try and act like negroes. What do you think? Is he a great loss to the world?

This is yet another example of the establishment using a high-profile incident to suppress the expression of patriotic opinion. Think about how bizarre this is. The Labour and Conservative parties have tens of thousands of members. In the 1950s, their membership was in the millions. Among that vast membership, there must have been people convicted of serious crimes, including murder. But no one ever thought to demand that the Labour or Conservative parties be shut down because one of their members had been convicted of a crime. Yet this is the standard that all patriotic parties face routinely.

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It seems that GD is not alone in "intimidation""coertion"and violence,the eussr is much more practiced in the art,and once the precident is set for banning political parties whos views are dangerous to their political hegemony,the polit bureau in Brussels will have a field day,violence is regrettable,but it is only a measure of the tyranny that opposes it.

The name Hannes Swoboda sounded familiar: CZ mentioned him as an Austrian MEP who opposed the Austrian government's decision to offer refugee asylum to Syrian Christians. Swoboda is also in favour of Turkey's full inclusion into the EU.

If the Guardian's bolcheviks really think that erasing democracy in Europe will make violence disappear they're in for a big surprise. So far the "far right" parties have largely served to jugulate people's violence by presenting a democratic and pacific alternative.A ban on anti-immigrationnist political expression coupled with the present rise in both immigrant and "antifascist" (leftist) violence will make the situation highly explosive.

Greek rap! It sucks. Greece had better not ban Golden Dawn. The people are fed up and without Golden Dawn, the violence will go thru the roof. Liberals think they can ban their opponents and shut them up. They are wrong.